A request for some answers regarding characteristics of NWN2 in comparison to NWN.
Type
Other
NWN2Game
All
Description
I've been playing and modifying NWN for some time now, and feel very pleased with what has been achieved by community builders. However, after almost a decade since the game came out, submissions are very scarce nowadays, so I decided to finally make the jump to NWN2.
Nevertheless, I found several things to be... disturbing during my first few minutes of playing, and chose to share them here, so as to get confirmation/rejection of very specific issues:
1. I went around the configuration menus once and again to try and get smooth camera turning via mouse or keyboard, but no matter what I changed, the camera moved in half-frozen, long and wide turns, as if there were pre-determined widths of turn. Is this correct, and camera turning isn't nearly as smooth as in NWN, or have I just missed a certain configuration to make it work seamlessly?
2. While in NWN both Bioware and the community have worked to make a sharp and "focused" graphical experience, it seems to me NWN2 is "Glary" and relies on shader and lighting resources, rather than textures. Again, am I right, or is there a configuration option to make NWN2 less "shinny and blurry"?
3. Though there is a wide array of NWN2 mods already uploaded to the vault, the files seem to be significantly fewer than those for NWN. One may consider the fact the previous game is older, and therefore there's been much more time to work on it, but it seems to me the proportional amount of NWN2 files is still very low. The straight question would be: Is NWN2 not as "Modifiable" or easy to personalize as NWN was?
4. My final question is probably the easiest to answer. There are some modifications I find "indispensable" to play NWN (chalk it up to the fact the game spoiled me with its vast potential for über personalization),and they are the LETO character editor, and the Character Customize Override. Any gamer armed with both of them could easily modify ANYTHING regarding their own character, and although I know there is a LETO for NWN2, I have not found something similar to the Character Customize Override, which is, in plain terms, an internal crafting dialog to let the gamer modify tails, wings, colors in anything dyed, body parts, shields, armors, weapons,visual effects, etc. Did I miss it, or is there actually no CCO parallel for NWN2?
Anyway, thanks in advance for any info you may share on the previous particulars. I apologize if such things have already been asked, but while searching for specific answers, I found none.
Thanks to all the posters for taking the time to share their thoughts. However, it seems I will have to get "down and dirty" if I want to find what is and what isn't working as NWN did.
It appears my "playing perception" of NWN is very different from that of most of you, and though I am deeply grateful for your comments, I still don't have the answers I was seeking, save for point 3, which has been thoroughly explained.
Anyway, happy to see community members are eager to aid a fellow!
NWN2 is fully capable. It lets you do things you just can't do in NWN1, with a lot more scripting and user interface options, and you don't have to create new tilesets to do really customized areas. But it's not NWN1 either, some things NWN1 will always be able to do, and it's also developing advanced things like horses, swimming, flying at the moment entirely by the community, which actually is about as long after the release of NWN2 as it was also done after the release of NWN1, and unlike NWN1 this is entirely being done by the community.
I mean the DM client in NWN1 is a take as it is affair, but i have already done major changes to the user interface and DM tools, adding access to a players inventory and adjusting stats with a full GUI. This is something which you just cannot do in NWN1, and once done it will let us keep adjusting how core things in NWN2 work. This is not on the vault but i am sharing it with those in the community and it's installed and working on my PW.
We also have a lot more being done in NWNx due to having more complete symbols, with bugs being fixed on PW's by the community, and even the networking layer in the server has been replaced. Right now the scripting engine itself is being replaced in a new project which should be able to address quite a few bugs. Add to that toolset plugins which let us add features directly to the toolset like YATT and nwn2mapper which replace how areas are made entirely, and even allow you to use tools like L3DT which is used for multiple games.
NWN2 work does take longer, but so does comparable level work in NWN1, what we don't have is folks hopping in assuming they can just slap some garbage together and get accolades for it, most of those involved put a lot of care and effort into things. Once you put the effort into learning how things work you find that you dont' want to go back since those things which were changed were done so to bypass core limitations in NWN1, simple things like opening more than one area at a time, or having a choice between tile based and 3d style height maps, or the numerous toys.
As for the camera, there are options for how all that works. Also using skywings client extension adds some adjustments to how it works as well. ( not to mention adding macros, copy paste, an extra map and console which work really well on a second monitor, and a stand alone dm client if you just want to go on in text only mode )
I agree with NWN DM that these questions would be better served on the NWN2 forums. You will find that the NWN2 builder community is a vastly different attitude then the NWN one.
As a long time NWN builder, I know full well the shock of moving over to NWN2, but I can tell you that I would never go back. The flexibility of what you can do in NWN2 is just staggering.
4: There are plenty of override character files for NWN2 on the vault and a couple of character editting programs. They're a bit harder to use but they're there. You just need to go looking everywhere 'till you find them (the character ones are in Hack Packs & Models and the character editors are probably under Utilities or Tools).
With regards to point 3: NWN2 is much more customisable than NWN was. However, because there's sucha great degree of control it takes a lot more time and effort to make anything for NWN2 and this turned a lot of builders away. Dunno if this helps but with the NWN toolset you could churn out a mediocre area in about half an hour t(or up to two hours if you wanted the area to be any good). With the NWN 2 toolset you can't make the really ugly areas the NWN toolset let you make. You can make average to brilliant areas but to create such an aera typicaly takes about eight hours for a quality job.
Whereas the NWN area creation was pretty much painting random tiles then cycling through tiles in a preset order the NWN 2 toolset's emthod is chose each tile from a list. Personaly I'm a perfectionist and hated the lack of control the NWN toolset gave me but I can see how many folk would consider the degree iof control the NWN2 toolset gives up be too much.
I suggest posting your questions over on the official NWN2 message boards on the BioWare website.
There are a lot of easy answers to your questions, but here only you will see them, whereas on the message boards, they'll have a bigger audience (and more contributions from multiple people who will give you varying opinions).
One thing; make sure you're patched up all the way.
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at 2010-07-06 22:55:18
